The Delaunay-Belleville Built For Tsar Nicholas II That Outlived Him

In 1909, the French marque Delaunay-Belleville — then widely regarded as the most luxurious motorcar manufacturer on Earth — built a model exclusively for one customer. They called it the SMT, for Sa Majesté le Tsar. His Majesty the Tsar. They cast the three letters onto the cooling jacket of the engine itself. His name was Nicholas II of Russia. He ruled the largest country on the planet. He was the cousin or nephew of nearly every other reigning king and queen in Europe. He was, by the third decade of his reign, the last absolute monarch the modern world would produce. His imperial garage at Tsarskoye Selo grew, by the eve of the First World War, to more than fifty motorcars — Delaunay-Belleville, Rolls-Royce, Mercedes, Russo-Balt, Hispano-Suiza — and was technically directed by a young French chauffeur named Adolphe Kégresse, who, in 1913, invented the half-track motor vehicle so the Tsar could continue hunting wolves in the deep Russian snow. Nine years after the SMT first rolled out of the factory, Nicholas II was shot in the basement of a merchant's house in Yekaterinburg with his wife, his four daughters, his only son, and four loyal attendants. Ten years after that, the Soviet government sent his favourite car to the scrapyard. This is the story of the most luxurious motorcar in the imperial collection — and the dynasty, the French chauffeur, and the empire that all outlived it in unexpected ways. 🚗 Episode 02 of The Royal Garage — a series on the cars, the collections, and the dynasties of the world's most powerful royal houses. ▶ Subscribe and turn on notifications. The catalogue is still opening. #RoyalGarage #NicholasII #DelaunayBelleville #Romanov #ImperialRussia #RoyalHistory #VintageCars #AutomotiveHistory #ClassicCars #BelleEpoque